After the King's madness had become permanent he spent the last years of his unhappy life at Windsor, but Queen Charlotte still resided for long periods at Kew, where she died in November, 1818, at the age of seventy-five. Earlier in the same year, three royal weddings had taken place within the old house, for the question of the succession had become pressing. Though Queen Charlotte had had fifteen children, she had no living grandchildren, for the Princess Charlotte, the only child of George IV. had just died. The drawing-room was fitted up with a temporary altar, and on the same day the Duke of Clarence (afterwards William IV.) was married to Adelaide, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, and the Duke of Kent to Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg. A few weeks before, the Duke of Cambridge had also been married in the palace. Suffering, like Kensington Palace, from lack of royal favour and general neglect during the latter part of the nineteenth century, it was restored in 1898 and opened to the public by the wish of Queen Victoria, as a commemoration of the Diamond Jubilee. CHAPTER XII BUCKINGHAM PALACE Buckingham Palace, the London residence of the monarch, is the most familiar of all the royal palaces to the general British public, in so far as everyone, sooner or later, migrates to London. Unfortunately the spectator sees only a somewhat depressing and stereotyped building, lacking the majestic proportions of Windsor and the stately beauty of Hampton Court, representing, indeed, the very lowest ebb of English architecture. Yet, in spite of its uninspiring exterior, it is full of interest, for present-day life throbs within its walls, the nation's history is bound up with it, and it pulsates with memories of the Queen who won the hearts of her people as a young girl and kept them all through her long and honoured life. As a palace, its life-story is just beginning; three sovereigns only, excluding our present King, have lived within it. [Illustration: Buckingham Palace, from the Lake in St. James's Park.] In the days of James I. the site of the palace was occupied by a plantation of mulberry-trees, a royal investment, the King believing that the cultivation of silkworms would be lucrative both for himself and the nation. In this he was disappointed, but the Mulberry Gardens remained as a place of amusement for the public until 1675. Both Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn mention visiting the gardens, to which the fashion of the Restoration resorted to eat mulberry tarts.